"Difficult To Imagine"

The Quebec Disciplinary Board has ordered the immediate provisional suspension of an attorney facing criminal charges 

Let us also add that it is difficult to imagine that a member of the public would be represented by the respondent when she is facing allegations of criminal offenses. The lawyer is the custodian of public trust and supervision must ensure that this is preserved.

The charges

This request follows a criminal offense brought against the respondent, as appears from the arrest warrant of May 1, 2024, which mentions the following:

Concerning Noémi TELLIER

1. Between May 7, 2019 and November 10, 2023, in Repentigny, district of Joliette, in Blainville, district of Terrebonne and other places in Quebec, was an accessory after the fact to the murder of Francis Turgeon, thus committing the criminal act provided for insection 240of the Criminal Code .

Montreal Gazette reported

A defence lawyer who has worked often at the Montreal courthouse was arrested Thursday and is charged with being an accessory after the fact to a murder carried out in 2019.

Noémi Tellier, 35, of Longueuil was charged at the Joliette courthouse and her case will return to court later this month. The charge carries a maximum life sentence. According to the arrest warrant issued in the case, Tellier, a lawyer since 2012, is alleged to have been an accessory to the homicide from the day before it was carried out on May 8, 2019 to Nov. 10, 2023.

The victim of the homicide was Francis Turgeon, 33, a man described as a prolific methamphetamine dealer in a court decision delivered in 2020 in an unrelated case. He was killed at his home in Repentigny.

Two men — Kevin St-Pierre, 34, and James Patrice Mardy, 33 — were arrested in November and are charged with first-degree murder. Their case returns to court on the same day as Tellier’s on May 29.

Another man named Wesley McKenzie was arrested days after Turgeon was killed, but the murder and conspiracy charges filed against him were later dropped.

According to La Presse, St-Pierre is Tellier’s former partner and they had a child together. In 2022, the pair were involved in a civil court case together in Joliette that challenged how some items were seized when a search warrant was carried out in the Sûreté du Québec’s investigation of the homicide.

On April 24, Tellier pleaded guilty at the Longueuil courthouse to impaired driving. She entered the plea on the same day she made her first court appearance on the charge and received a $2,000 fine.

(Mike Frisch)